Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended to start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately leaving behind their terminal. It was a conventional opening, the equivalent of straying off the path in the wild woods in one age, or a car breaking down at night on a lonely road in another.

After doing extensive research, I can definitely tell you that single malt whiskies are good to drink.

I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.

One should never mistake pattern for meaning.

I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.

There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun.